BIOS has written a review of the Lenovo 3000 C100 note book and gives it a rating off 6.5. They write -’Nevertheless, for a starting price of just £599, it might just be the perfect system for your number-crunching workforce. But with the advent of the Intel Core Duo processors and more powerful offerings from Dell and HP, you may want to keep your options open. And if you do need more multimedia jazz, maybe you should look at the company’s N Series.’

Read more about the Lenovo 3000 C100

Trusted Reviews has posted a review of the Lenovo 3000 C100 and writes - ‘At first, the Lenovo doesn’t seem anything special and its 1,024×768 panel seems quite limiting. However, when taking the price of £575.97 and the close to six hour battery life in to account, you realise that this is a really good value notebook for taking on the road. The ThinkVantage software is excellent and offers peace of mind for those who aren’t PC savvy - allowing an IT manager to safeguard everyone’s data without them even knowing it. If you’re looking for a hardware rollout for a small to medium business, this Lenovo could fit the bill perfectly.’

Pocket Lint reviews the Lenovo 3000 C100 and writes - “Yes, compromises have been made in the choice of processor but this helps keep the price so low, it’s hard not to be impressed. What really stands out about the Lenovo 3000 C100 is the build quality and the battery life, neither of which we were expecting in a machine costing so little. If you can live with the basic performance, then you have yourself one bargain notebook.”

www.portableuniverse.co.uk

Are you a gamer? Then Dell gives you Dell XPS M1710, a notebook designed with gamers in mind. From its cutting-edge design that features brushed metal accents with your choice of Special Edition Formula Red or Metallic Black armor to its maximum performance, playing in it is such a cool experience.

Powered by Intel® CoreTM 2 Duo Processor, its performance is spiced up even more with the best graphics with its advanced graphics card GeForce Go 7900 GTX GPU. And enjoy its display at a 17” widescreen display with true high-definition resolution.

Even CNET believes that it is a good choice for gamers who have the money to purchase this kind of model. Its review says that:

The good: Best-in-class gaming performance; top-shelf processor and graphics engine; attractive illuminated case; solid multimedia features; full assortment of ports and connections.

The bad: Very expensive; display not remarkably bright.

The bottom line: If you’re a hard-core gamer looking to play the newest games at the highest settings, this is the best system that (a lot of) money can buy.

You may check out other features and specifications at Dell’s website

Are you a formula 1 fanatic? Even notebooks are now inspired by these lightning fast vehicles. Acer gives you a special edition the Ferrari 1000 that is an ultra-portable 12.1” notebook. Very easy to bring anywhere that even lets you connect to the net anywhere with its great wireless technology. Road-ready carbon fiber keeps the machine in tip-top condition wherever you may roam.

It is built on AMD’s Direct Connect Architecture, AMD Turion™ 64 X2 Mobile Technology that utilizes two 64-bit processing cores for awesome computing power. Store all data you want on its fast and reliable Serial ATA hard disk drives of up to 160 GB.

The Ferrari 1000 gives a great display on its high-brightness (200-nit) Acer CrystalBrite™ 12.1″ widescreen LCD letting you enjoy watching DVD movies or browsing pictures taken from special occasions. And easily share pictures and files having a DVD-Super Multi double-layer drive that reads and writes all popular DVD and CD formats.

The HP Pavillion DV900t is HP’s flagship desktop replacement notebook PC with a nice crisp 17” screen, full 101-key alphanumeric keypad (with numpad), and various other entertainment options such as an optional webcam, Bluetooth, TV Tuner, and HD-DVD drive.

The HP Pavilion dv9000t Entertainment Notebook

I first started looking around for a laptop around Feb 20^th when my previous HP dv4000 mysteriously died on me. While I could have gotten it fixed, I decided it was easier to upgrade to a more modern notebook. I had settled on getting a HP dv6000t until I saw the HP dv9000t. The glorious screen and video card at only 7.8lbs was irresistible. Most people would consider 7.8lbs too heavy to carry for a college notebook, but my previous dv4000 with a 12-cell weighed about the same, so I was set! I also considered the Dell Inspiron e1705, but the dv9000t was more affordable, plus I didn’t need the power (and heat) a 7900 GS would probably give off.

HP dv9000t specs:

• Genuine Windows Vista Home Premium
• Intel(R) Core(TM) 2 Duo T5200(1.60GHz/2MB L2Cache)
• 17.0″ WSXGA+ BrightView Widescreen (1680×1050)
• 256MB NVIDIA(R) GeForce(R) Go 7600
• HP Imprint Finish + Microphone + Webcam
• 512MB DDR2 System Memory (1 Dimm)
• FREE Upgrade from 80GB 5400RPM to 120GB 5400RPM!!
• Super Multi 8X DVD+/-R/RW w/Double Layer Support
• Intel(R) PRO/Wireless 3945ABG Network w/Bluetooth
• No TV Tuner w/remote control
• 8 Cell Lithium Ion Battery
• Microsoft(R) Works 8.0

£699.00 incl. vat and delivery from cheap-it.com .

The dv9000t in my dorm room. If only I could hide those cords too…

First Impressions:

The screen is huge and the notebook itself is very slim. Previous 17” laptops from HP were very bulky weighing 9.8lbs, but it’s nice to know that the dv9000t is easy to carry when needed. Believe it or not, I actually carry this thing around every day (some people would call me crazy), but it is manageable. The fingerprint finish is also a nice touch that HP has now put on desktops and laptops that really makes the laptop shine.

Top of dv9000t with HP Fingerprint Finish

The top is also a fingerprint magnet.

Design and Build:

HPs design on this laptop is a process I’ve seen evolve over the years to make a much better product. It looks like it’s worth more than you paid for it, especially with the suave imprint finish applied to the top. One thing to be weary of is that the latch requires 2 hands to open, and the hinges don’t seem as solid as my previous laptop. It looks great on a desk, but it’s not a ThinkPad in terms of durability so no one should treat it as such. I compared the dv9000t to my previous 15.4” dv4000 and found that it weights just as much with the 12-cell battery while being MUCH slimmer. That’s definitely an improvement in that area.

Only marginally longer

But slimmer too

The Screen:

The screen is amazing on this laptop. The only downside is that there is a bit of light leakage on the very bottom middle portion of the screen. The good thing is that it’s not noticeable unless you want to stare at it. I guess not everything can be perfect.

Graphics

The system comes with a Geforce 7600 Go, with either 256MB or 512MB of video RAM. It should play today’s games decently at max resolution with some special effects off. I suggest getting the lower 1440×900 resolution if you intend on gaming a lot so the GPU doesn’t struggle too much. At the price point of £699, I couldn’t find any other laptop with a much better GPU.

Sound

The built-in Altec-Lansing speakers sound great. Sound doesn’t distort at higher volumes and it retains clarity. The SP/DIF support also allows you to hook up your laptop to a surround sound system if needed.

Processor and Performance

I got the lowest Core 2 Duo possible (Intel T5200 at 1.6Ghz) so that I could upgrade myself later if I wanted. It runs fast enough for my needs of watching movies and general computer tasks.

Benchmarks

A note for the benchmarks, I upgraded my RAM to 2GB DDR2 533Mhz RAM and all scores reflect this.

3DMark06:

3DMark06 is a benchmarking tool that tests the graphical performance of a notebook, below is how the HP dv9000t with its nVidia Go 7600 stacked up to other notebooks.

SuperPi Benchmark Results

Super Pi tests the speed of a processor, in our test we force Super Pi to calculate the number Pi to 2 million digits of accuracy:

HDTune

HDTune measures hard drive performance, below is a screenshot of the results for HDTune when run on the dv9000t:

Keyboard and Touchpad

The keyboard on the dv9000t is probably one of the better ones I’ve used. Each key is very springy, allowing for feedback, similar to desktop keyboards. The additional numberpad is also a big plus, as few laptops have them at all. One minor thing is that the right shift key is now half-sized, just like other keys to accommodate the closer position of the arrow keys. The touchpad itself is ok; not bad and not great. It does have an off switch, but the feel of the pad itself is rather slick. Sometimes there is just too much drag on the surface to use easily. I switched to an external mouse and keyboard to solve my problems.

Input and Output Ports

The clinching factor that really made me purchase this laptop is the bevy of ports available. It comes with 4 USB ports, a built-in memory card reader, an expansion slot, 2 headphone inputs, ExpressCard slot, and probably best of all, an HDMI port. The beautiful part about HP’s newer laptop series is that all of them include an expansion port that allows you to connect to a specific HP dock that replicates most of these ports so you can connect just 1 cable to your laptop. Pretty sweet, no?

USB Port, ExpressCard slot, DVD+/-RW Drive, USB Port, AC Adapter Jack

S-Video port, VGA Port, Expansion Port (for HP QuickDock), Ethernet & Modem Jacks, HDMI Port, 2 USB Ports, Firewire 4-pin Jack, Multimedia Card reader (with SD card inserted)

BatteryLife

The 8-cell battery lasted around 2 hours before it died with medium brightness and Wifi. I suspect this probably has to do with the state of nVidia’s drivers for Vista that still need some work.

Heat and Noise

The notebook fans are usually on most of the time when on AC but there is no way to control them. Heat comes from the left hand side where the HD is, and from the back near the fan. It makes some noise when it’s quiet, but not enough to be annoying.

Wireless

No problems with the Intel 3945ABG. The wireless switch is very handy when want to quickly turn off WiFi and switch to Ethernet when I reconnect to my HP QuickDock.

Service and Support

HP’s service is moderate compared to other companies. It’s not the best and it’s not the worst but somewhere in between. Personally, online help was more receptive when I was exploring my options about my broken dv4000 compared to phone help so that avenue was much better. I haven’t dealt much with tech support at all before that, so I can’t make much of a decision.

Software:

HP has a LOT of software pre-installed on my notebook, some of it I quickly removed but others I did keep, most notably HPs Total Care Advisor. It’s a helpful program that keeps track of the state of your PC, advising you on certain updates for drivers, basic support, and browsing HP accessories. It was useful enough that I kept it. Be aware that HP uses a recovery partition as a “worst case” backup instead of discs, so you’ll need to make them yourself. One thing I dislike is that reinstalling Windows Vista from the recovery partition and discs installs all the other unnecessary software as well; I might just have to get a Vista RTM disc and install Home Premium myself. HP does easily offer all the downloads for installed drivers, so that is a huge plus.

Vista

Running Windows Vista Home Premium on this laptop has its ups and downs. As a whole, my PC runs smoothly but certain areas like copying large amounts of files needs a LOT of work. HP includes all the drivers in a folder called SwSetup, so if you ever install a bad driver, you can easily reinstall the old one without going online. I’d recommend at LEAST 1GB, preferably 2GB RAM in order to run Vista smoothly. There’s still a lot of minor things that need to be worked out, but on the whole, it’s a pretty good upgrade from Windows XP.

Conclusion

I’ve used this notebook for a few days and have no regrets purchasing it. Vista runs pretty well after a 2GB upgrade and has caused no trouble while using it. Most of my programs worked flawlessly when installed. It’s slim enough to be carried around for a desktop replacement and certainly wowed my friends. The screen is great, the keyboard works well, and I wouldn’t trade it for anything else. I do wish there were more battery life, but it’s not possible to have everything!

Pros:

• Large screen
• Number pad
• HDMI output
• Touchpad on/off switch
• Slim profile give the laptop size

Cons:

• Fingerprint magnet (cloth included however)
• Touchpad has some drag
• Right Shift key is smaller
• Media keys make noise (turn off in BIOS)
• Fans run quite often
• Notebook lid is a bit flimsy when closed

For price and availabilty www.portableuniverse.co.uk

data from www.notebookreview.com

Forget Roy G. Biv–the rainbow according to Sony includes such colors as sangria, cosmopolitan, dove, and indigo. At least, those are the shades the company offers for its new VAIO CR series laptops. (City-dwellers, take heart: they’re also available in black.)

Warning: this laptop may induce toothaches.

(Credit: Sony)

Sony has long led the laptop-as-fashion-accessory movement (see previous C series models and the FJ series that started it all), offering laptops in wild colors when other manufacturers were just starting to experiment with hues beyond black and gray. The CR series is no different, featuring a case that is saturated with color, right down to the touch pad. Sony’s press release also touts that each CR series laptop comes with “funky VAIO branded wallpaper” as well as the option to purchase a matching carrying bag and mouse. And proving that flashing LEDs aren’t just for gamers, the VAIO CR series includes a pulsating LED beneath the laptop’s trim.

Those of you who still believe that it’s what’s inside that counts can rest assured: the 5.5-pound thin-and-light laptops will include Intel’s latest Centrino Duo platform, with Core 2 Duo processors, integrated graphics, and an 802.11n wireless card. The 14.1-inch wide-screen display includes a fairly standard 1,280×800 native resolution, and the display bezel has room for a built-in Webcam and microphone.

The six new CR series models start at £999 and will start shipping at the end

News of the upcoming 11.1″ screen Sony VAIO TZ notebook that was leaked last week came without much information and no images. Thanks to some information from a French website we now have images and full specs for the VAIO TZ11MN/N and VAIO TZ11XN/B.

The VAIO TZ11MN/N appears mostly the same as the TZ11XN/B except for the silver lid coloration instead of black on the XN/B, you get 1GB of RAM instead of the 2GB with the XN/B and the hard drive is 80GB instead of 100GB on the XN/B. The XN/B is rumored to have a carbon fiber lid — though the specs sheet does not confirm this. No release date is set, but a summer launch is assumed.

Some highlights for the VAIO TZ11 are:

• 2.62lbs of weight
• Integrated optical drive
• Unique rounded hinge design
• LED backlight screen
• 1.06GHz Core 2 Duo processor
• Built-in Motion Eye camera

Detailed specs and images for each model are below — anyone think that keyboard redesign looks a lot like the MacBook keyboard?

VAIO VGN-TZ11MN/N

• Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo U7500, 1.06 GHz
• OS: Windows® Vista Professional
• Memory: 1GB DDR2 SDRAM (max 2GB)
• Hard Drive: 80 GB Ultra ATA (4200 rpm)
• Optical Drive: DVD+-RW/+-R DL/RAM
• Screen: 11,1” X-black LCD with LED backlight, WXGA (1366 x 768)
• Graphics: Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 950
• Ethernet (1000Base-T / 100 BASE-TX / 10 BASE-T);
• Modem: V.92/V.90
• Wireless:Wi-Fi IEEE 802.11 a/b/g, Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR support
• Microphone integrated
• Protection: Shock protection G-Sensor Hard Drive
• Instant On technology
• Ports:
  • 1 i.LINK (IEEE1394, 4 Pin), 400 Mbps port
  • 1 DC in
  • 1 Audio out
  • 1 RJ-11 Modem
  • 1 RJ-45 Direct Port (Network)
  • 2 USB 2.0 Port
  • Fingerprint reader
  • 1 VGA port connection
  • 1 Microphone
  • 1 SD card Slot
  • 1 Express Card 34mm
  • Memory Stick Reader (Duo, Memory Stick PRO duo, MagicGate)
  • “Motion Eye” Camera ( 20 Images per second), 0.3 Mega Pixels, max video resolution VGA (640×480)
• Dimensions: 7.8-in x .89-in - 1.17in x 10.9-in (198 ,2 mm x 22.5-29.8 mm x 277 mm)
• Weight: 2.62lbs

VAIO VGN-TZ11XN/B

• Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo U7500, 1.06 GHz
• OS: Windows Vista Professional
• Memory: 2GB DDR2 SDRAM (max 2GB)
• Hard Drive: 100 GB Ultra ATA (4200 rpm)
• Optical Drive: DVD+-RW/+-R DL/RAM
• Screen: 11.1” X-black LCD with LED backlight, WXGA (1366 x 768)
• Graphics: Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 950
• Ethernet (1000Base-T / 100 BASE-TX / 10 BASE-T);
• Modem intégré V.92/V.90
• Wireless: Wi-Fi IEEE 802.11 a/b/g, Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR support
• Microphone integrated
• Protection: Shock protection G-Sensor Hard Drive
• Instant On technology
• Ports:
  • 1 i.LINK (IEEE1394, 4 Pin), 400 Mbps port
  • 1 DC in
  • 1 Audio out
  • 1 RJ-11 Modem
  • 1 RJ-45 Direct Port (Network)
  • 2 USB 2.0 Port
  • Fingerprint reader
  • 1 VGA port connection
  • 1 Microphone
  • 1 SD card Slot
  • 1 Express Card 34mm
  • Memory Stick Reader (Duo, Memory Stick PRO duo, MagicGate)
  • “Motion Eye” Camera ( 20 Images per second), 0.3 Mega Pixels, max video resolution VGA (640×480)
• Dimensions: 7.8-in x .89-in - 1.17in x 10.9-in (198 ,2 mm x 22.5-29.8 mm x 277 mm)
• Weight: 2.62lbs

For pricing and availability www.portableuniverse.co.uk

HP Pavilion dv6000t Review

by Aaron Goldman

Overview and Reasons for Buying:

It was a hot summer’s day, so I waltzed into Best Buy to check out the latest gadgets and to cool off. The first thing I saw was the glimmer from HP’s shiny new notebook, the dv6000z. The design was what caught my eye, a perfect balance of art and performance. I was looking to replace my somewhat old AMD Turion 64 notebook with a dual core system anyways. I wasn’t really impressed with my previous AMD system so I went online to browse and see if HP planned on releasing an Intel based notebook in this series. I had read up about the new Intel Core 2 Duo Chip (Merom) and definitely wanted a notebook with that kind of power. After a couple weeks of pestering HP techs on the phone I finally got a release date and waited. September 30^th 2006 the dv6000t series was finally available from Portable Universe . I ordered mine on the first day and tracked its status until it was delivered. My first experience using the dv6000t was playing F.E.A.R. Multiplayer online. I had been using my older HP dv5130us notebook with an ATi Xpress 200m GPU and a Turion 2.0GHZ processor. The dv6000t blew it out of the water in terms of speed and FPS. I was quite impressed to say the least, especially seeing as I had to use a 900MHZ Celeron desktop until my notebook arrived from China. Weeks after that I joined the Gameslaptops.co.uk forum. I wasn’t alone; many others were also very impressed with this notebooks stylish looks and power.

Availability:

The dv6000t is available from Portable Universe, and many retailers as preconfigured models. The ability to customize a notebook is great because you don’t need to buy any extra hardware that you can’t afford or don’t need.

This notebook is available with the shiny piano black glossy type HP custom finish, as well as the oldschool rough plastic type. The notebook price ranges from usually around £499.

Reviewed dv6000t CTO Notebook Specs:

• Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo T7200 (2.0GHZ with 4MB L2 Cache) “Merom”
• Hard Drive: Fujitsu 120 GB SATA -5400RPM
• Screen: 15.4″ LG Phillips “LPL” WXGA BrightView Widescreen (1280 x 800)
• Graphics: Nvidia GeForce Go 7400, 128 MB Dedicated + 128 MB Shared
• RAM: 2GB 667MHZ DDR2 SDRAM
• Addition: HP Imprint Finish + Microphone + Webcam
• Optical Drive: Super Multi 8X DVD+/-RW w/Double Layer with Lightscribe
• Battery: 6-Cell Lithium-Ion
• Wireless: Intel PRO/Wireless 3945 802.11 a/b/g + Bluetooth
• Operating System: Microsoft Windows XP Professional w/ Upgrade to Vista Business
• Dimensions: 1.0” - 1.69” (H) x 14.05” (W) x 10.12” (D) (Weight: 6.09 lbs)
• Ports/Slots: 1 IEEE 1394 (FireWire 400); 3 USB (USB 2.0); 5-in-1 memory card reader; VGA monitor out port; S-Video out; RJ-45 Ethernet LAN; RJ-11 modem; Express Card; IR receiver; Expansion Port 3; (2) headphone/speaker jacks with SPDIF
• Accessories:HP Expresscard TV Tuner, and Mobile Remote Control.

Build and design:

The build quality of this notebook is great, it’s solid and sturdy. The LCD hinges give little if any flex while opening and closing with ease. There is a little rippling on the LCD when the top bezel is pressed with some force, but I’ve seen much worse. The touchpad works amazingly well, however the buttons are somewhat flimsy and feel cheap, though this doesn’t matter if you use an external mouse most of the time. There are an abundance of input and output connections on this notebook. It’s somewhat strange however they are all on the sides, with the exception of the headphone jacks in front. Most notebooks tend to have some ports on the back, the headphone jacks in the front do get quite annoying when hooking a stereo or surround sound into them. Possibly one of my favorite features on this notebook happens to be the media card slot. Not many notebooks have integrated media card readers; this is definitely a plus for avid digital photographers.

HP dv6000t top view

I believe this notebook would fall somewhere in between a desktop replacement and portable. I wouldn’t take this notebook mountain climbing or throw it out of a window like some have claimed to do with the IBM T40s, however for the everyday person, bringing this to school; work or whatnot is pretty easy. Weighing in at about 6 pounds this isn’t super light but at the same time, it’s not quite as heavy as the all around desktop replacements that I’ve seen. Though, keep in mind that with a 12-Cell Lithium-Ion battery and AC adapter this notebook would weigh somewhere around 8 pounds which isn’t fun to carry around all day.

HP dv6000t bottom view

Audio:

This notebook comes equipped with Altec Lansing stereo speakers which are located in between the LCD bottom and the one touch buttons. I was quite impressed with the quality of sound that these can blast out. When using Cyberlink PowerDVD to boost the volume they get somewhat distorted however. With my older notebooks I found myself plugging in my surround sound speakers a lot more than I do with this model.

Screen:

HP dv6000t front view

Probably the most important feature when buying a laptop is having a good screen. If you’re going to be staring at it for thousands of hours it might as well be comfortable to look at. I received this laptop with an LG Philips 1280×800 WXGA Hi-Definition Brightview Widescreen with no dead pixels. I can easily say this is the nicest LCD I have ever owned. The screen has a very crisp picture, and no light leakage whatsoever. Viewing angles from the left and right are perfect, and do not look washed out. Vertical viewing angles however sometimes can be washed out when viewing from too far away. Using the included software you can customize your LCD’s color to your liking with the Nvidia Settings Manager tool which I thought was a plus.

Graphics:

Windows Vista ran well on the dv6000t

I chose the Nvidia Geforce Go 7400 Series GPU for this notebook. This is the best available graphics chip for this model notebook. It seems to perform very well for average use and can play most new games at medium settings. The 128MB of shared “turbocache” doesn’t slow this PC down at all and it runs Vista Aero very smoothly. Most people considering this notebook seem to be worried about having enough graphics power for Vista which I did as well. After running Windows Vista Enterprise Edition for about two weeks I can safely say that it was a very nice experience (visually) and there were no quirks with the graphics processor. I had to use modded .inf files as the official Nvidia drivers aren’t out yet, however it still ran better that I had thought it would. Windows Vista seemed to actually run faster than XP Professional even with all the Aero features enabled. Another good benchmark test for the Go 7400 is F.E.A.R. which I play quite a bit. F.E.A.R. seems to run best with Processor set to Maximum, Graphics set to low, and the display at 1280×800. It will play at medium graphics settings however personally I would rather have a higher resolution.

Playing F.E.A.R.

Processor and Performance:

The Intel Core 2 Duo T7200 2GHZ Processor in this notebook is lightning fast. In fact, the only time that I’ve hit 50%-100% CPU usage was while running SuperPI and Seti@home. My main reason for buying this dual core notebook was to edit and convert audio and video with Adobe Audition and Premier Pro. This is really where the dual core systems seem to shine, with this one being no exception. I also chose 2 GB of RAM, which seems to help encoding chug along quite nicely. The Intel Speedstep Technology also clocks down the processor until it’s needed to save battery life and prevent avoidable battery loss and overheating. The Core 2 Duo is a good choice as programmers are starting to create multithreaded programs and with the 64-Bit computing age on the horizon.

Benchmarks:

Super Pi measures the overall performance of the processors ability to crunch numbers by calculating Pi out to 2 million digits of accuracy.

Super Pi

PCMark05 Comparison results:

PCMark05 measures the overall system performance of a PC, you can see the dv6000t performed well:

Futuremark’s 3DMark05 graphics benchmarking software gave results consistent with a mid-range dedicated GPU:

3DMark05 Comparison Results:

HDTune

HDTune measures the performance of the system hard drive, in this case a 120GB 5400RPM Fujitsu drive.

Heat and Noise:

After owning a notebook with a desktop Pentium 4 HT chip, I have learned to appreciate noise, or lack thereof. This notebook is very quiet; it’s about as loud as my older HP AMD Sempron notebook with cool and quiet technology. I guess Speedstep is basically the same thing. The only time I hear the fans come on is when I’m playing graphically intense games or running my CPU to 100% (Seti@home.) In addition, this notebook also stays pretty cool; the right of the touchpad feels warm on occasion, but not hot. Nothing I can really complain about there.

Keyboard and Touchpad:

HP dv6000t keyboard and touchpad

The keyboard is very well laid out for a 15.4” laptop. It feels…Solid! None of the typical loud clickity-clackity type sounds emit from it, which is nice. The touchpad, as I said before, is very good. It’s sensitive and responds very well. It has a built in scrolling feature which is a bonus, however doesn’t always work 100% of the time. The touchpad buttons are alright. They feel kind of cheap and seem like they would break easily if pressed too hard.

Input and Output Ports:

Included in this notebook are (3) USB 2.0 ports,1 IEEE 1394 (FireWire 400); a 5-in-1 memory card reader; VGA monitor out port; S-Video out; RJ-45 Ethernet LAN; RJ-11 modem, Express Card, IR receiver, Expansion Port 3, (2) headphone/speaker jacks with SPDIF, and a Line in port. This notebook unfortunately does not have an HDMI port or a PCMCIA card slot.

Front view of dv6000t

Left side view of dv6000t

Right view of dv6000t

Back view of dv6000t

Wireless:

This notebook has (3) types of built in wireless capabilities. The Intel 3945 802.11 A/B/G wireless card, Integrated Broadcom Bluetooth, and an integrated infrared RC6 receiver. I have had no problems with any of the wireless capabilities in this laptop thus far, in fact I use a Belkin wireless router and it stays connected always. My past notebooks had Broadcom cards and it seemed like I would always get dropped connections.

Battery:

I purchased a 6 and 12 Cell Lithium-Ion battery when I bought this notebook. The 6-Cell seems to last around 2.5 hours and when the screen is dimmed significantly it will almost make it to 3. I ended up selling the extra 12-Cell Lithium-Ion battery because I actually never used it. The 12-Cells’ should get around 6 hours or so as they are essentially two 6-Cell batteries conjoined.

Operating System and Software:

My dv6000t came with Windows XP Professional pre-installed along with 20 GB of bloatware and partitions.

I used them as soon as I received my notebook to do a clean install, however using the recovery DVDs did not give me a clean install. HAH! I think that’s a joke, they installed all the original bloat — everything back again. I would recommend purchasing a retail copy of XP just so you don’t have to go through the de-bloating trouble. I purchased XP Professional and did a clean install after going through all the de-bloating trouble and noticed that the system ran faster. The only downside of installing a retail copy of XP is hunting down the drivers for the laptop, so if you plan on doing this yourself be sure to copy or burn the C:\swsetup folder first. The swsetup folder contains all the system drivers and whatnot which need to be installed after installing a new OS. Be careful however, the bloatware is also in the swsetup folder, you will need to pick it out folder by folder, good luck. At the time I purchased the notebook came with a free upgrade to Vista, but now it is being sold pre-installed.

The dv6000t is a great customizable notebook for all kinds of people. Whether you need just a basic laptop to surf the web and write documents, a medium range gaming machine, or something to just crunch lots of data this notebook can do it all when configured appropriately. It’s hard to find things wrong with such a beautiful and well built laptop, I can’t stop admiring its zen-type design even while I type this. Overall I think this is very balanced and priced very well comonentwise. I would definitely recommend it to anyone who needs a powerful machine, while still retaining stylish and futuristic looks.

Pros:

• Great multitasking
• Decent Battery Life
• Comfortable Keyboard
• Beautifully Designed
• Cool and Quiet
• Quality Audio
• Excellent LCD
• Media Card Reader

Cons:

• Max GPU is Go 7400
• Missing a HDMI Port
• No PCMCIA Port
• Fingerprint magnet
• Way too much Bloatware
• No Recovery DVDs
• Easily Scratched

For price and availability www.portableuniverse.co.uk

Review Cars and laptops obviously make good bed-fellow if Asus’ latest Lamborghini-badged model is anything to go by. While its first effort - the VX1 - may have been seen as a me-too effort to rival Acer’s Ferrari tie-up, there’s got to be something in the partnership to produce further offspring.

Given its premium branding - and equally premium price tag - Asus hasn’t skimped on the components when assembling this model.

Put it through 3DMark06, though, and the choice of GeForce Go 7700 chip, rather than the more powerful 7800 or 7900, starts to show. The VX2 only managed to pull in a result of 2,343, which is fairly disappointing.

It’s also a bit of a let down on the optical drive front. While you do get a multi-format DVD writer, which is Lightscribe capable for direct labelling, you would really expect a next-gen optical drive - like HD DVD or Blu-ray - in a unit costing this much.

Under the hood, as it were, the VX2 sports an Intel Core 2 Duo T7400 ticking away at 2.16GHz and a healthy 2GB of 667MHz DDR 2 RAM. The hard drive stretches to a more than comfortable 160GB and connects via a SATA interface. Graphics are powered by an Nvidia GeForce Go 7700 chip with a healthy 512MB of dedicated RAM to play with. If you’ve heard of PCs that are not capable of running Windows Vista with all the bells and whistles activated, this certainly isn’t one of them.

The VX2 is fully up to the job of Vista’s Aero interface, with glass window effects and whizzy 3D application switching galore. In keeping with the performance ethos, you’ll find a copy of Vista Ultimate installed. Vista pegs its performance rating at a not too shabby 4.7 Windows Experience Index score, which currently goes up to a maximum of 5.9.

Running it through PCMark05 showed that the VX2 had beefed up compared to its predecessor - topping the latter’s score of 3,954 by over 1,000 points at 4,991.

When it comes to gaming, though, it’s adequate rather than exemplary. Run it through Doom 3 and it’s not bad at all - at 1,280 x 1,024 it racked up 62fps. Drop the res down to 1,024 x 768 and you’re looking at 85fps

Put it through 3DMark06, though, and the choice of GeForce Go 7700 chip, rather than the more powerful 7800 or 7900, starts to show. The VX2 only managed to pull in a result of 2,343, which is fairly disappointing.

It’s also a bit of a let down on the optical drive front. While you do get a multi-format DVD writer, which is Lightscribe capable for direct labelling, you would really expect a next-gen optical drive - like HD DVD or Blu-ray - in a unit costing this much.

Asus has equipped the VX2 with a 15.4in widescreen display - giving it one extra over the 4:3 VX1 - but it has a slightly bizarre resolution of 1,680 x 1,050, leaving it short in both directions for playing back full 1080 HD content which has a resolution of 1,920 x 1,080.

The VX2 is packed with all manner of sockets, slots and connectors. Down the left hand side you’ll find Ethernet, s-video, VGA, two USB and HDMI. Spin over to the other side and there’s modem, four-pin Firewire, microphone, headphone (which doubles as SP/DIF) plus an ExpressCard 54 slot and card reader that accepts SD and MemoryStick.

At the top of the screen is 1.3-megapixel camera and built in mic - so if web chats are your thing, then you’ve got everything you need to get going bundled right in. On the wireless front there’s Intel Next-Gen Wireless-N, based on the draft 801.11n spec, and Bluetooth 2.0.

With a footprint of 36.3 x 26.3cm, measuring 3.8cm at its highest point when closed and weighing 3.3kg this is a laptop destined for desk use and the occasional wander rather than becoming your inseparable portable pal.

Just below the bottom left hand corner of the keyboard there’s an array of bright, white lights to tell you useful things - like whether your wireless is on or your Bluetooth is activated. While this seems like a good thing initially, they’re just way too bright. Try getting on with some actual work - remember you’ve got to pay for this thing somehow - and they soon become a distraction, as does the hard drive light pulsing away at the top of the keyboard.

Another annoyance - not specific to Asus exclusively, but still a massive pain - is the Function key in the bottom left of the keyboard, sitting where you’d expect the Control key to be. After all - which key are you likely to use most often? The one with semi-random vendor specific key combinations for adjusting things like the screen brightness or the one that’s used for keyboard shortcuts that have been hard wired into you brain over the past twenty years?

Below the keyboard is a touchpad that’s responsive enough, but you need to click the buttons quite hard for them to register, which can be a pain at times. In between the two buttons is a fingerprint reader. You can use the fingerprint reader to replace your Windows password - so you can use it to log on to your machine. It takes some practice to get used to the scanner, however. Registering different fingers took numerous attempts to get the pressure and speed of swiping right for it to be recognised.

The VX2 is available in two finishes - yellow and carbon fibre. Both are limited edition, but the carbon fibre model reviewed here only runs to 100 models - so if you want one you’d better be quick.

Completing the laptop/car hybrid look is the leather trim on the inside, which covers the palm rest at the front before making its way round the keyboard and finishing off at the back under the display. The yellow stitching at the edge is no doubt purely decorative, but it does make you wonder what would happen if you accidentally unpicked your laptop.

There’s no doubting that Asus has packed some impressive, high-end components into the VX2, but with an asking price of £1,999 you’re left with the impression that you’re paying for more than just the bits inside. While it’s a nice case with a very desirable badge on it, omissions such as no HD optical drive and poor games performance are disappointing.

Verdict

Style-wise it will no doubt appeal to the market that loves fast cars and other such desirable items. It’s not badly specced - and there are some impressive bits in there. But it’s not top of the range right across the board, which you would really expect when you’re laying down the best part of two grand. Unfortunately it has too many niggles to make it an instant must-have.